Alex Loeb and Richard Dekker both 23 and from New York. Their goal was to fly the Atlantic.
Mindful of
the US ban on such flights, they choose Canada as a starting point. They then chose Cape Breton
Island in Nova Scotia, rather than Gander, Newfoundland possibly assuming that the officials at the Gander Airport
would stop them given the fates of flier's Smith and Backman only months before. On August 11, 1939 at 9:40 AM
with a small crowd watching, they two took off at low tide from Point Michaud Beach, near St. Peters. The plane
they had chosen for the flight was a Ryan Monoplane, model C-2, reg NX557NN similar to Lindbergh's but was 10 years
old. With a fuel capacity of 350 gallons only gave them just enough endurance for their destination, Dublin, Ireland.

That year the vast Atlantic had claimed it's third and fourth aviator.

Young New Yorkers Expected To Reach Coast In 22 Hours

FOYNES. Ireland, Aug. 12- (UP)-Watchers in Ireland were without word late today of two New York fliers, nearly
27 hours out of St. Peters, Nova Scotia, on an attempted flight to Ireland on the Great Circle route taken by Col.
Charles A. Lindbergh in 1927.

The fliers are Alex Loch, 32, and Dick Decker, 23, flying a Ryan monoplane of the type used by Lindbergh. They
had hoped to reach here in less than 22 hours. The British air ministry reported that they must have encountered
a fog belt on the first part of the flight, good weather in mid-ocean, than rain, clouds and fog up to 300 miles
from the Irish coast, where the weather was good.

This was the third attempted stunt flight across the Atlantic this year. Nothing was ever heard of Charles Backman,
Swedish pilot who left St. John's, Nfld., May 16 on a 90-horsepower, single-motored monocoupe, for Stockholm, Sweden,
or of Thomas H. Smith, who on May 28, left old Orchard Beach, Me., in a little four-cylinder Aeronca plane on an
unauthorized flight toward "Europe."

Although their plane was old, mechanics said it was in good condition. It had blind flying instruments, but
no radio. It carried 350 gallons of gasoline, enough to keep aloft 25 to 30 hours, depending on flight conditions.
They estimated the flight would take 20 hours.

Like Douglas Corrigan's flight from New York to Dublin last, summer, this one was without authorization of the
United States I department of commerce, Loeb and Decker also had kept their plans secret until just before they
left St. Peters at 10:14 AM (EDT) yesterday.

Then, a minute before they roared down the beach. Loeb had called to the few spectators out to see them away:
"We may go to Palestine after we land in Ireland. We have absolutely good I instruments, a wonderful ship
and I we can't possibly lose out."